Sometimes In April

Starring:Idris Elba, Oris Erhuero, Brian Williams (III), Lyton Namburu, Kaya Kagimumukasa, Hubert KoundÃ©, Fraser James, Ester Uwizeye, Charles Bwanika, Bill Clinton, Chantal Mutanguha, Assumpta Micho, Pamela Nomvete, Michelle Rugema, Patty Hannock, Arthur Yuhi Abia, Abdallah Nassoro, Tega Mutimura, Prudence Bushnell, Gloria Bugwiza
Director: Raoul Peck
Studio: Hbo Home Video
Product Type: DVD

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A clear-eyed look at the Rwandan genocide is offered in Sometimes in April, a frank take on the 1994 slaughter that claimed upwards of 800,000 lives. Some overlap with Hotel Rwanda is inevitable, and this HBO feature does have similarities, but without the strong suspenseful storyline of Hotel. Its protagonist (the strong Idris Elba, from The Wire) pieces together the past tragedy from the perspective of a decade-later war-crimes tribunal, where his brother is on trial. It's hard to know which is less bearable--the depiction of atrocities, such as mass murder at a girls school, or the second-guessing of the international community, which largely stood by while the horror was unfolding. (Like Hotel Rwanda, this film zeroes in on the U.S. government's distinction that "acts of genocide" occurred in Rwanda rather than "genocide," a Joseph Heller-like absurdity.) The plain style of director Raoul Peck, shooting on location in Rwanda, works for the subject; his film Lumumba was also a direct, blunt account of a tragedy in Africa. The approach doesn't work as well in the U.S. scenes, which feature Debra Winger as a concerned official; these just look clumsy. But the subject itself remains worthy of close attention. --Robert Horton

Customer Reviews:

Beats the pants of Hotel Rwanda.......2007-06-16

Hotel Rwanda leaves you feeling upbeat, like "Thank god, someone did something." This movie makes you feel like shit. You end up disgusted with humanity. It is realistic, and there is no bright spot at the end of the tunnel.

Stunning and heartbreaking African genocide in 1994.......2007-05-22

Anyone who saw Hotel Rwanda may also wish to see this well directed movie
about the gripping Rwandan conflict in 1994. This is a story of two brothers whose political standing became divided by the genocide which engulfed the nation into a chaotic nightmare, a small but beautiful African nation unjustly abandoned by the international community.The movie depicts a genocide which consists of an organized attempt by the Hutu majority to exterminate the minority Tutsis. Not by gassing as the Final Solution applied to Europe's Jews in World War II, but by bullets,clubs and, of all gory ways that could be thought of by the human mind, machetes imported from China. Moderate Hutus(Hutus against the horrible persecutiuon) as well as heroic Hutus who risked and gave their lives to defend their Tutsi neighbors and friends were also targeted for murder. The lot more easier to identify Tutsis ,thanks to the Belgian Colonists who issued Identity Cards to distinguish Tutsis from Hutus during those colonial times. The admissions of guilt, the confessions, remorse and pleas for forgiveness can not make up for the senseless slaughter of loved ones as experienced by the protagonists in this movie although they are trying their best to forgive and start a new life. However,those memories will linger for the rest of their lives. Rwanda in 1994 has shown the world that without any genuine and effective effort of control nationally and internationally, genocide can still haunt this planet we live in.

We must learn from this!!!.......2007-05-09

"Sometimes in April" is a difficult, often disturbing movie to watch, but one I think is important to see.

Shot in a semi documentary mode largely on location in Rwanda, with lots of flashbacks from the present, it tells the story of the attempt to systematically wipe out the Tutsi minority (referred to as cockroaches) by the Hutu Majority.

After first giving the viewer a synopsis on the genesis of the bad blood between the two tribes from the days under Belgian colonial rule, the movie settles into the story of two brothers, Augustine (a soldier in the army) and Honore Muganza (a radio presenter; excellent performances from both actors, as well as the entire cast which was comprised largely or Rwandans), as tensions rise in the country, cumulating in the shooting down of the president's plane which serves as the spark for the massacres to commence.

It is heartbreaking watching former neighbours and friends turning on one another with machetes, clubs and guns, all because one is from the `wrong' tribe, the death of Kurt Cobain getting more airtime, and foreign governments debating whether `acts of genocide, or an act of genocide' is taking place, while an estimated million people were killed over a period of a hundred days.

Much more graphic than "Hotel Rwanda", where the viewers were largely insulated from the savagery going on outside the hotel walls, it was important that this tale be told, and mankind, hopefully learn from this, and while ensuring such a thing never happens again, also realize that every human life is worth something, regardless of whether oil runs beneath your feet or not.

Amazing movie about the Rwandan genocide.......2007-01-11

Hotel Rwanda is the movie we all know about but this one is well worth watching if you have any interest in Rwanda or genocide and its devastating impact on lives.

scar against humanity.......2006-07-26

It's shocking the extent of indifference in our country to situations in nations that don't rest on our borders or house our greed-feeding resources. The Rwandan genocide of 1994, the extermination -- for the Hutus referred to their Tutsi brothers as "cockroaches" -- of close to a million people over the course of 100 days, is perhaps the most incredible and disgusting event in modern civilization. But who remembers it as well as Kurt Cobain's suicide which was discovered the same day as speculation that a civil war had broken out in some country and between two peoples nobody had ever heard of? Seemingly worse than Nazi extermination in its pure senselessness; more akin to the Bosnian-Serb split on fast forward. It would be as if Nazi Germany had divided its Jewish population into two classes and let them slaughter one another -- that's what Belgium effectively did when it divided Rwanda into two camps. "Sometimes in April," named for the month in which the carnage took place, is a haunting view from the inside told through the eyes of a Hutu soldier with a Tutsi wife who is himself in danger and loses his wife, three children and watches his best friend killed in the process. In fact, he loses everyone in his circle save one: his brother, who over the radio helps fuel the Hutu propoganda machine, and who 10 years later wants to own up to his crime, while trying to reconcile with his brother. The docudrama, which spares no detail of the horror of those 100 days, is interspersed with political tiddlywinks here in the U.S. in which, when hundreds of thousands are known to be dead, the talking heads aren't even able to agree whether the term "genocide" applies -- and which leaves one ultimately wondering: What if they had been Caucasian?

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